---ROUND 1 RESULTS---
1st Place: Tomislav95 (+14 Points)
Respire - Bound
First Impressions: Woah, this was actually really damn good. What a fantastic buildup and ending.
Well, outside of maybe Chlorine and Wine, this is already way better than everything you submitted in my previous roulette. I hope that’s a sign of things to come! Anyways, those who have followed my previous roulettes should know that atmospheric black / doom metal is usually a winning combination for me, if it’s done well. And yup, it’s certainly done well here. This song was my favorite this round from the first listen up until the very end. It totally nails the balance between being melodic and harsh, with bright lead guitar melodies layering on top of pummeling drums and wailed vocals, without feeling mismatched at all. The song actually has a pretty bright atmosphere to it, while still feeling very melancholy. It’s quite beautiful and suits the instrumentation perfectly, like Deafheaven when they’re at their best. But what really elevates this song to another level is the buildup in the second half. The song becomes hauntingly quiet and gentle, then introduces some beautiful sounding violin (or some other stringed instrument) and even some saxophone! (Or maybe trumpet? I’m bad at this.) This part of the song makes you feel like you’re slowly ascending into heaven. It transitions nicely into the climax of the song which brings back the harsh vocals and distorted guitar, and then ends shortly thereafter. So yeah, if you couldn’t already tell, I like this song. A lot. Can’t really bring myself to find a single thing to complain about. Will definitely check this album out in the future.
2nd Place: Cyril (+13 Points)
Exist - Writhe
First Impressions: This one gets weird halfway through. I think in a good way?
Here’s another good example for types of metal I really like. There’s two main things that work really well about this song. The first its overall aesthetic - it’s very dark and dirty sounding, without being too low-fidelity. Sounds like Hell, which is great. Secondly, this song has a great amount of variety across its nine minute runtime. The first half switches back and forth between some jumpy, rhythmic technical death metal-inspired riffs, and some more melodic yet still heavy bits that kind remind me of Deliverence-era Opeth. Those two styles compliment each other well, and the transitions between them are always smooth. The second half of the song is completely different, and super weird. It’s basically an extended guitar solo with some pretty dissonant note choices, complimented by some absolutely filthy sounding bass. It almost gives me a King Crimson vibe. This part adds a lot of depth and variety to the song that I wasn’t expecting, and it builds up into a nice climax. Final verdict: this one gets weird halfway through, and it’s great.
3rd Place: Sacul (+12 Points)
Indukti - And Who’s The God Now?
First Impressions: Got a song from this artist in a previous roulette. Expected it to be an instrumental, but was pleasantly surprised when it wasn’t. Surprisingly demented-sounding too, in the best way possible.
I swear, these top three submissions are like a showcase of what I like in metal. Y’all should be listening and taking notes. Anyways, this song has a strong focus on rhythm. It’s got a somewhat tribal sound coming from the percussion, which synergises super well with the pummeling guitar riffs. I also really liked the influences of world music, which come through in the acoustic guitars and give the song a more unique aesthetic than your typical progressive metal track. Lastly, I love the vocals. This guy’s having a lot of fun, I can tell. He gives a really wild and theatrical performance, which gives the song a bit of a crazy, demented vibe to it without feeling too cheesey. Reminded be a bit of SikTh, which is usually a good thing from a vocal standpoint. The flow of the song is great too; you get a nice buildup in the intro, a quieter section in the middle, and a quick but satisfying finale that ramps up the intensity. Could have done without the couple minutes of chanting at the end, but hey, the song’s basically over at that point anyways. Is that an actual language? Is it just gibberish? These guys are from Poland, but that certainly doesn’t sound like Polish to me. Hmm.
4th Place: Nekov (+11 Points)
Dream The Electric Sleep - Listen To Me
First Impressions: This one had some pretty interesting influences and certainly didn’t come across as generic. That instrumental section leading up to the final chorus was stellar.
Alright, time to lighten things up a bit after all that metal. I really like the bright, soaring atmosphere this song has. It has a really pretty summertime vibe to it; it makes me picture myself frollicking through sunlit fields or having a nice picnic or some shit. The lyrics, which seem to be about escaping from an unhappy situation to someplace brighter, compliment this atmosphere well. The intro is especially beautiful, and that instrumental section leading up to the final chorus? The instrumentation there is just perfect. That part elevates the song up quite a few levels. This one was always a pleasant listen.
5th Place: TAC (+10 Points)
Anabasis - Human Supremacy Illusion
First Impressions: Seems pretty run-of-the-mill for this subgenre of metal, but not bad.
In hindsight, my first impression of this song is pretty odd because it’s kinda hard to nail down what subgenre of metal it is. It feels like a midpoint between power metal and technical death metal, with elements of progressive metal thrown in as well. It might be a bit more on the power metal side, which I think is what jumped out to me on my first listen. Anyways, this song grew on me quite a bit. The best parts of it for me are easily the main riff and choruses. They’re layered and busy, but in a good way. The technical riffs, lead guitar, layered vocals, and that particularly catchy synth melody all come together well to create a lot of power and energy. The verses have some nice layering as well, albeit to a lesser extent. I wasn’t blown away by this song or anything, but I liked it.
6th Place: DTA (+9 Points)
Coheed And Cambria - In Keeping Secrets Of Silent Earth: 3
First Impressions: Only heard one other song from this band. The vocalist sounds a lot better in this one, for whatever reason. Pretty good stuff.
To elaborate on my first impressions, that other song is Welcome Home, which I gave another listen to after receiving this. I still like that song more, but for whatever reason, the vocalist sounds a lot less goofy here and didn’t bother me at all like he did there. One thing these two songs share in common is that they’ve got some really good guitar riffage, which I always appreciate. The chorus of this song is super catchy and definitely the highlight of the song for me; “man your battle stations” has been stuck in my head all week and likely will be for a while longer. I’m kind of amazed how big the chorus sounds despite being so sparse instrumentally. I think a lot of that grandness comes from the vocals, so hey, I guess I can say he’s a good vocalist after all. I also like the gang vocals that come in for the final chorus to make it sound just a bit bigger than the ones that came before. As for the rest of the song, the intro and verses are good. The slower middle section of the song is fine, but probably my least favorite part of it. It kinda feels like it’s just there for plot reasons; I know this band has quite the elaborate plot and lore. Maybe one of these days I’ll actually do a full dive into one of their albums. Maybe.
7th Place: kingshmegland (+8 Points)
Mile Marker Zero - 2001
First Impressions: The synth work is definitely what stands out most to me in this track. It gives the song a bit of a different vibe compared to most other stuff in this genre.
I don’t have a ton to say about this track, but I definitely liked it. Like I said in my first impressions, the synth work jumps out at me as being more interesting than your typical prog song. They kinda give the song an 80s vibe to me, in a good way. There’s also some great groovy guitar riffs throughout the track. Overall, it has a really good sense of momentum. It quickly goes from one section to another without ever losing its upbeat energy, and I can’t say there’s any part of the song that I didn’t think was at least decent.
8th Place: Ruba (+7 Points)
At The Drive In - Arcarsenal
First Impressions: Short, upbeat, good amount of energy. Not much else to say.
Short write-up for a short but sweet song! This song’s fast, heavy and energetic, as a two minute opener should be. It covers a lot of ground in such a short amount of time, without feeling too all-over-the-place or anything like that. I’ve got no complaints about the instrumentation whatsoever; the guitar work in particular is great. The vocals are good, even though I’m not a huge fan of that vocal style that all modern punk bands seem to have. Insert conclusion sentence here.
9th Place: jingle.boy (+6 Points)
Mystery - Delusion Rain
First Impressions: Felt pretty generic. That’s the biggest complaint I can think of for it, though.
My opinion on this song hasn’t changed much. It still feels like pretty typical progressive rock to me, but it’s definitely competent. It starts out with a nice intro with a good buildup into the first verse. I really like the melodic guitar soloing on top of the soft synth pads. It reminds me a lot of early Riverside, and there’s some pretty prominent David Gilmour influence in the playing too. The vocal melodies in the chorus and prechorus are quite memorable, and the harmonies in the prechorus sound really nice. There’s also a cool keyboard bit right after the second chorus that I like quite a lot. Overall, I think this is a good song, but I probably won’t return to it much, and I think it’s probably a minute or two longer than it needs to be. The last thing worth mentioning is that you sent me a live version of the song. I usually prefer studio tracks, so out of curiosity I gave the studio version for it a listen. They sounded pretty much the same, though I actually thought the aforementioned guitar solos and cool keyboard bit sounded better in the live version, so good call there, I guess.
10th Place: Puppies_On_Acid (+5 Points)
Marillion - The Invisible Man
First Impressions: With how long this song is, I didn’t expect it to be so quiet for such a large amount of its runtime. Will definitely need more listens to decide if I think this works well or not.
I’ve got a lot of mixed feelings about this one. There’s elements of it I think are great, and there’s elements of it I think fall totally flat. It’s a long song at thirteen and a half minutes, it’s pretty quiet throughout, and it’s broken up into what feels like four distinct sections, to me. My first complaint is that the transitions between said sections aren’t that fluid; most of the time it just feels like one abruptly ends and then the next starts without much in the way of cohesion. The first section is uneventful and is over pretty quickly. The section that starts a few minutes in is much better; I really like the synth work and atmosphere here a lot. Spacey stuff like this is right up my alley. The only problem is the vocals. They’re very mumbly in the first half of the song, and the weird warbly effect over them doesn’t help much. The next section starts around the six minute mark, and it’s also quite good. It has a really emotional, tragic vibe to it. I’m not really sure what the song is about, but it’s quite evocative and desperate-sounding, especially towards the end of this section. The vocals here are also a lot better; he conveys a lot of desperate emotion and really sells the mood. Unfortunately, this section ends with another abrupt stop, and I don’t like the fourth and final section at all. I feel like this song really needed to build up to a strong climax for it to work, but it sadly does nothing for me and hurts the song as a whole. The cracks in the vocals here don’t help much. I appreciate what this song was going for, but I think it could have been executed a lot better.
11th Place: senecadawg2 (+4 Points)
The Downfall Of Gaia - The Grotesque Illusion Of Being
First Impressions: A bit more abrasive than I prefer this type of metal to be, but still has some elements that are right up my alley.
To restate what I said earlier, atmospheric black metal is usually a winning combination for me, if it’s done well. Unfortunately, this song felt pretty weak to me. I think the main reason why is that I just didn’t find it to be too atmospheric. The post-rock-esque tremolo-picked guitars are good, and there’s an extremely brief break in the middle that’s kinda nice, but for most of the song you’re just getting some typical black metal blast beats and hazy guitars that just aren’t that interesting. I also don’t really like the vocals, even in comparison to other black metal artists. The climax is decently satisfying, but the song’s pretty short, so there isn’t much of a build up to it. I can’t say I flat-out dislike this song, but it’s certainly no Agalloch.
12th Place: Evermind (+3 Points +6 Points) [PERK USED: DOUBLE POINTS]
The Human Abstract - A Violent Strike
First Impressions: Some nice progressive metal on the heavier side of things. First listen didn’t leave a huge impact on me, but I could see this doing pretty well.
Yeah, so looking back on my first impressions here, I didn’t get much from this song on my first listen, but it sounded like it’d be a grower. So I kept listening to it, and it just didn’t happen. Sound-wise, there’s not much about it that stands out compared to other heavy progressive metal bands. I can kinda hear some Protest The Hero-eque mathcore influences in the first part of the song, especially in the quick, shreddy lead guitar. I enjoy that sound, but here it feels more downplayed and restrained than it should be, almost sanitized in a way. I definitely would have liked more energy and heaviness in that department. By the way, please don’t take that as an invitation to send me Protest The Hero, because I’ve already gotten three songs from them across my previous roulettes! Anyways, the flow of this song is also a bit weird. After those fast first few minutes, it transitions into a slower-placed section that’s surprisingly repetitive. It pretty much repeats the same quiet bit, heavy bit tradeoff over and over until the song ends, without building upon it or going anywhere interesting from it. I can’t say I enjoyed this one as much as I was hoping or expecting to.
13th Place: Stadler (+2 Points)
Aerosmith: Back In The Saddle Again
First Impressions: This just isn’t really my kind of rock, unfortunately.
This 24 year old millennial just hasn’t been able to get into much classic rock. There’s songs here and there that I like, but most of it I respect a lot more than I actually enjoy listening to it. I’ve also noticed that most classic rock songs I enjoy fall more into the bigger, “arena rock” type of sound, more than the straightforward, raw, rock-n-roll style that this song has going. That’s not to say I thought it was bad though, and there’s a few things I like about it. It’s got a catchy main riff, and a nice groove throughout the whole song. I could even see myself dancing to it, if I were in some alternate universe where I ever danced, ever. I also really like how the song comes in with a short intro that kicks right into the first chorus at full steam. On the more negative side, the chorus is pretty repetitive and started to grate on me after a while, especially the super rapsy “BAAAAAACK”s from Tyler. Probably could have done without the cowboy samples as well. As a whole though, I can see why people like this song, but it’s just not really my thing. Time to turn in my Bostonian card.
14th Place: Kattelox (+1 Point)
Kings Of Leon - The End
First Impressions: Nice dreamy vibe. Liked the post-rock influence.
My first impressions for this song already cover pretty much everything I like about it. It’s got some great atmospheric guitar work; the little flourishes and background texture it provides really add a lot to the pretty, dreamy vibe of the song. But outside of that, I can’t say this one does much for me. It’s quite repetitive and doesn’t have much substance outside of its atmosphere. The chorus was nice the first few times I heard it, but after that it just became annoying. Not a bad song, but I personally didn’t like it all that much.
Newly Banned Artists:
- Respire
- Exist
- Indukti
THE SCORE SO FAR:
1: Tomislav95 - 14
2: Cyril - 13
3: Sacul - 12
4: Nekov - 11
5: TAC - 10
6: DTA - 9
7: kingshmegland - 8
8: Ruba - 7
9: jingle.boy - 6
9: Evermind - 6 [PERKS USED: Double Points]
11: Puppies_On_Acid - 5
12: senecadawg2 - 4
In Danger
13: Stadler - 2
14: Kattleox - 1
UPDATE: I decided it would be too mean to eliminate four people after only two rounds. So instead, only the bottom two contestants will be eliminated after this following round. I updated the "Rounds" section in the first post to reflect the new elimination points. And with that, let's get started on the next round!
---ROUND 2: HEAVY---
I like heavy stuff. The top ranking songs in the first round should probably make that clear. Send me more! Hail Satan.
Keep in mind that after this round, the bottom TWO contestants will sadly be eliminated. If you're lower than you'd like to be currently, you might want to consider using a perk... Good luck!
Poll
Topic: Buddyhunter1's Roulette v4: Post-Roulette Updates: Sacul (Read 44108 times)